Snorri Sturluson qua Fulcrum: Perspectives on the Cultural Activity of Myth, Mythological Poetry and Narrative in Medieval Iceland
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- 2. Lokrur
- 3. Late Stanzas Added to Baldrs draumar
MIRATOR 12/2011 7
2. Lokrur
In Iceland, rímur poetry emerged as a new mode of narrative poetry in the 14 th century. 22 As such, any rímur poem was necessarily composed subsequent to Snorri’s Edda. This singing tradition can be considered predominantly oral, yet rímur poets exhibit a preference for manuscript narratives as their subjects. The rímur-cycle Lokrur, conventionally dated to ca. 1400, describes the adventure of the god Þórr’s visit to Útgarða-Loki, incontestably developed directly from Snorri’s account of this adventure in
discussion and review of scholarship has been recently provided by Haukur Þorgeirsson and will not be repeated here. 23 The adaptation of this particular narrative is striking because rather than a traditional myth, it appears to be a construction by Snorri oriented to (and thus relevant for) a contemporary audience and its worldview (§7–8). This rímur presents evidence of the reception of Snorri’s work and its influence on narrative traditions of mythology by ca. 1400. 24 It suggests that by that time, Edda was an authoritative source and resource for this and presumably other mythological narratives.
The fourteen-stanza eddic poem Baldrs draumar is preserved in AM 748a I 4 to . This poem opens with the gods gathering in response to Baldr’s ominous dreams. Óðinn (Baldr’s father) journeys independently to the realm of the dead in order to summon and interview a dead seeress. The interview outlines the death of Baldr and subsequent revenge-cycle (orchestrated by Óðinn), culminating in a reference to the vernacular apocalypse referred to as ragna r k (‘fates of the gods’) (§6). There were two intersecting cycles of narrative material surrounding the death of Baldr. Baldrs draumar is characteristic of one, situating Óðinn as a key figure, displaying his ability to access knowledge of the future and orchestrate the revenge cycle in which H ðr is the central adversary. The other concerns the gods as a community and is the focus of Snorri’s account in Gylfaginning, where it is the key to his
22 See e.g. Björn K. Þórólfsson, Rímur fyrir 1600, Hið íslenzka fræðafélag: Kaupmannahöfn 1934. 23 Haukur Þorgeirsson, ‘List í Lokrur’, Són 6 (2008), 25–47. 24 I am thankful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out Edda’s impacts on Völsungs rímur’s introduction. MIRATOR 12/2011 8
eschatology and is in some sense the heart of his mythography: Frigg (Baldr’s mother) is a central protagonist and Loki is the punished adversary. The two cycles intersect but are based on contrasting conceptions of time or fate and do not appear inclined to overlap. 25 Late paper manuscripts of Baldrs draumar (mid-17 th century and later) include several additional, little- known stanzas which introduce the Frigg-cycle into the Óðinn-narrative. 26
These stanzas were rarely reproduced even in 19 th century editions of the poem and were treated with greater skepticism than other eddic poetry only preserved in paper manuscripts. 27 They have hardly even been mentioned since Hugo Gering’s incisive statement: ”they are without question a late Icelandic fabrication, several centuries younger than the traditional old strophes in” AM 748a I 4 to (as evident on both linguistic and metrical grounds). 28 Sophus Bugge compares these supplementary stanzas to Snorri’s Edda. 29 Verbal correspondences are identifiable with Snorri’s synthesis of Christian conceptual models and idioms into his narrative. 30 This suggests 25 See further Frog, Baldr and Lemminkäinen: Approaching the Evolution of Mythological Narrative through the Activating Power of Expression (UCL Eprints), University College London: London 2010, http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/19428/ , at 26–29, 318–339, 352–364. 26 See Sophus Bugge, Sæmundar Edda hins fróða. Christiania 1867, at xliv ff., 138–140. 27 They are fully integrated in e.g. Erasmus Christianus Rask’s edition (Edda Sæmundar hinns fróda: Collectio carminum veterum scaldorum Sæmundiana dicta, Holmiæ 1818, at 93–96); P. A. Munch omitted them and observed “de forekomme os at være en aldeles overflödig Udtværen af Fortællingen, og uforligelige med den korte og fyndige Tone” (Den ældre Edda: Samling af norrøne oldkvad, Christiania 1847, at xi, cf. 56–57); integrated in Theodor Möbius’s edition with a separate critical edition of the AM 748a I 4 to text (Edda Sæmundar hinns fróda, mit einem Anhang zum Theil bisher ungedruckter Gedichte, Leibzig 1860, at 68–70, 255–256); Hermann Lüning only describes the content of these stanzas, observing “Schon die sprache bezeichnet diese eingeschalteten strophen als späteren ursprungs, und nach strophen solchen inhaltes erscheine Odins ritt in die unterwelt in jeder beziehung überflüssig” (Die Edda:
them without elucidation (Die Lieder der älteren Edda (Sæmundar Edda), Paderborn 1876, at 18n); they are unmentioned by Svend Grundtvig (Sæmundar Edda hins fróða: Den ældre Edda, København 1974, cf. at 10–11, 191–192); and finally presented by Sophus Bugge as an appendix (Sæmundar Edda, 138– 140; directly reproduced in the commentary of F. Detter & R. Heinzel Sæmundar Edda mit einem
28 Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda , 2 vols., Halle 1927–1931, at 1.339–340: “sie ohne frage spätes isländisches fabrkat sind, mehrere jahrhunderte jünger als die in [AM 748a I 4 to ] überlieferten alten strophen.” Cf. the few sentences mentioning and dismissing these stanzas in Klaus von See et alia’s 99- page critical commentary on this short poem (Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, 7 vols., Heidelberg 1997–, at 3.378). 29 Bugge 1867, 138–140. Cf. st. c.3–6 (correspondences in cursive), “gríða beiða / granda ei Baldri // vann alls konar / eið at vægja”, and Gylfaginning, ch. 49, “ok var þat gert at beiða griða Baldri fyrir alls konar háska [....] Þá mælti Frigg: ‘Eigi munu vápn eða viðir granda Baldri. Eiða hefi ek þegit af llum þeim’” (RTW manuscripts; cf. the abbreviated rephrasing in the U manuscript). In the verses, double- alliteration and the (arbitrary) parts of speech on which it falls are characteristic of the added stanzas, one of many features identifying their composition as ‘late’ (cf. Frog 2010, 247n). 30 The expression alls konar, (things) ‘of all kinds’, appears specific to Snorri’s narrative as an outcome of his curious conflation of the Christian model of ‘all of creation’ with the Christian idiom ‘the quick and the dead’ (kykvir ok dauðir) resulting in the conceptual incongruity of identifying stone, metal, etc. as Yüklə 340,68 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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